You need to let your Joomla plugin know which LDAP server to contact, by DNS name or IP address. Some software reads the ldap.conf file for this information, but it seems Joomla does not.
Yes, there is a plugin which allows one to enter the server information which I've done. Since it's now working from the command line on the client server, I believe the problem is php related.
Consequently, where/how this is done is a question you need to research yourself, and/or ask in a more suitable forum than the OpenLDAP mailing list.
No, my problems were ldap related which is why I came here :). I have two problems to resolve, one was/is being new to openldap so needing help in resolving some of those issues. My joomla specific questions I've posted in the joomla forums.
By default, most LDAP client software assumes that the LDAP server exists on localhost. Referring to your earlier posts, stating the search base dc=example,dc=com is normally not enough to tell your LDAP client software where to look. For the command line tools included with OpenLDAP, see the tool's man page and "man ldap.conf" for more details.
Actually, you could have simply said to look into 'client access' in the ldap.conf and that would have been a great lead. That's what someone else posted and it was the lead I needed to at least resolve that the client wasn't even being allowed to connect. Now I need to figure out what is related to the php portion as I believe that's where the next problem lies.
So, if anyone knows of a way to test a php ldap connection from a client to a server machine, I'd sure welcome some input.
Thanks for the reply.